Italo Calvino - [Our Ancestors 02]

by The Baron in the Trees (epub)

  "And what about the other two wolves?"

  ". . . The other two were stock-still, staring at me. Then suddenly I took off my sheepskin jacket and hood and threw them at the wolves. One of the two, seeing this white ghost of a sheep flying toward them, tried to seize it in his teeth, but as he was expecting a heavy weight and that was just an empty skin, he lost his balance and also ended by breaking claws and neck on the ground."

  "There's still one left."

  ". . . There's still one left—but as my clothes had suddenly been so lightened by throwing away that jacket, a fit of sneezing came over me, to shake heaven and earth. At this sudden unexpected eruption, the wolf got such a shock that he fell from the tree and broke his neck too . . ."

  Thus my brother on his night of battle. What is certain is that the fever he caught as a result, ailing as he already was, very nearly proved fatal. For some days he lay between life and death, tended at the expense of the Commune of Ombrosa, in sign of gratitude. He was put into a hammock, and surrounded by doctors going up and down on ladders. The best doctors available were called into consultation, and some gave enemas, some leeches, some mustard plasters, some fomentations. None spoke any more of the Baron of Rondò as mad, but all as one of the greatest brains, one of the outstanding phenomena of the century.

  That while he was ill. When he recovered, things changed. Once again, as always before, some said he was wise, some that he was mad. But in fact he was never taken by these vagaries again. He went on printing a weekly paper, no longer called The Bipeds' Monitor but The Reasonable Vertebrate.

  } 25 {

  I'M NOT sure if at that time a Lodge of Freemasons was already founded at Ombrosa; I myself was initiated into Masonry much later, after the first Napoleonic Campaign, together with a great part of the local upper bourgeoisie and petty nobility, and so I cannot tell when my brother's first relations were with the Lodge. In this connection I will cite an episode which happened more or less at the time I am describing, and which various witnesses would confirm as true.

  One day two Spaniards, passing travelers, arrived at Ombrosa. They went to the house of a certain Bartolomeo Cavagna, a pastry cook, a well-known Freemason. They declared themselves, it seems, as brethren of the Lodge of Madrid, so that he took them one night to a meeting of the Ombrosian Masons, which then met by the light of torch and flare in a clearing in the middle of the woods. All this comes from hearsay and speculation; what is certain is that next day, as soon as the two Spaniards came out of their inn, they were followed by Cosimo, who had been watching for them, unseen from the trees above.

  The two travelers entered the courtyard of a tavern outside the town gate. Cosimo perched himself on an arbor overhung with wisteria. At a table was sitting a customer waiting for the pair; his face could not be seen, shaded as it was by a black hat with a wide brim. Their three heads, or rather their three hats, nodded over the white square of the tablecloth; and after some confabulation the hand of the unknown man began to write on a narrow piece of paper something dictated by the other two and which, from the order in which the words were set one below the other, appeared to be a list of names.

  "Gentlemen, good day to you," said Cosimo. The three hats went up, showing three faces with eyes staring at the man on the trelliswork. But one of the three, the one with the wide brim, dropped his at once, so low that he touched the table with the tip of his nose. My brother just had time to catch a glimpse of features which did not seem unfamiliar to him.

  "Buenos días!" exclaimed the two. "But is it a local habit here to introduce oneself to strangers by dropping from the sky like a pigeon? Perhaps you would be good enough to come down and explain!"

  "Those high up are clearly seen," said the Baron, "though others trail in the dust to hide their faces."

  "May I say, Señor, that none of us are under an obligation to show our faces, just as none of us are to show our rumps."

  "For certain kinds of persons, of course, it is a point of honor to hide the face."

  "Which, for instance?"

  "Spies, to name one!"

  The two companions started. The bent man remained motionless, but his voice was heard for the first time. "Or, to name another, members of secret societies . . ." he said slowly.

  This remark was open to various interpretations. So Cosimo thought and so he said out loud. "That remark, sir, is open to various interpretations. Did you say 'members of secret societies,' hinting that I am one myself, or hinting that you are, or that we both are, or that neither of us are, or did you say it because whichever way it's taken the remark is useful in terms of my reply?"

  "Cómo, Cómo, Cómo?" exclaimed the man with the wide-brimmed hat confusedly, and in his confusion he forgot to keep his head down, and raised it enough to look Cosimo in the eyes. And Cosimo Recognized him; it was Don Sulpicio, the Jesuit, his enemy from the days at Olivabassa!

  "Ah! So I was not mistaken. Down with the mask, Reverend Father!" exclaimed the Baron.

  "You! I was sure of it!" exclaimed the Spaniard, and took off his hat and bowed, disclosing his tonsure. "Don Sulpicio de Guadalete, Superior de la Compañía de Jesús"

  "Cosimo di Rondò, Freemason!"

  The two other Spaniards also introduced themselves with slight bows.

  "Don Calisto!"

  "Don Fulgencio!"

  "Also Jesuits?"

  "Nosotros también!"

  "But has not your order recently been dissolved by order of the Pope?"

  "Not as a respite to libertines and heretics of your stamp!" exclaimed Don Sulpicio, unsheathing his sword.

  They were Spanish Jesuits, who after the disbandment of the Order had gone into hiding and were trying to form an armed militia all over the countryside, to combat Theism and the new ideas.

  Cosimo put his hand on the hilt of his sword. A number of people had formed a ring around. "Be good enough to descend, if you wish to fight caballerosamente" said the Spaniard.

  Nearby was a wood of nut trees. It was the time of the crop and the peasants had hung sheets from one tree to another, to gather the nuts they beat down. Cosimo rushed on to a nut tree, jumped into the sheet, and managed to keep upright and prevent his feet from slipping on the cloth of this hammock-like support.

  "You come up a span or two, Don Sulpicio, as I've come down farther than I usually do!" and he, too, drew his sword.

  The Spaniard also jumped onto the outstretched sheet. It was difficult to keep upright, as the sheet tended to fold up like a sack around their bodies, but so heated were the two contestants that they managed to cross swords.

  "To the Greater Glory of God!"

  "To the Glory of the Great Architect of the Universe!"

  And they set on each other.

  "Before I plunge this blade into your gullet," said Cosimo, "give me news of the Señorita Ursula."

  "She died in a convent!"

  Cosimo was disturbed by this news (which, however, I think was made up on the spot) and the ex-Jesuit profited by this devilish trick. He swung out at one of the knots tied to the branches of the nut tree and sustaining the sheet on Cosimo's side, and cut it clean through. Cosimo would have fallen had he not quickly flung himself on to the sheet in Don Sulpicio's part and seized a rope. In his leap his sword pierced the Spaniard's guard and plunged into his stomach. Don Sulpicio slumped, slithered down the sheet on to the side where he had cut the knot, and fell to the ground. Cosimo pulled himself back on to the nut tree. The other two ex-Jesuits raised their companion—whether dead or just wounded was never known—hurried off and were never seen again.

  A crowd formed round the blood-spattered sheet. And from that day my brother had the reputation of being a Freemason.

  Due to the Society's secrecy I never got to know more. When I entered it, as I said, I heard Cosimo spoken of as an old-time brother whose relations with the Lodge were not quite clear, and whom some defined as inactive, some as a heretic who had switched to another sect, some even as an apostate; but his past
activities were always mentioned with great respect. He may even have been that legendary Master "Woodpecker Mason," to whom was attributed the foundation of the Lodge called "East of Ombrosa," and the description of the first rites of that Lodge seem to show his influence; suffice it to say that the neophytes were blindfolded, made to climb a tree, then dropped on the end of a rope.

  It is certain that the first meetings of Freemasons with us took place at night in the midst of the woods. So Cosimo's presence would have been more than justified, whether he was the person who received from correspondents abroad the volumes of the Masonic Constitutions, or whether it was someone else who had been initiated, possibly in France or England, who introduced the rites into Ombrosa too. It is possible, though, that Masonry had existed here for some time unknown to Cosimo, and that one night, moving about the trees in the wood, he happened by chance on a clearing where there was a meeting of men with strange vestments and instruments by the light of candles, and he stopped up there to listen and then intervened and confused them by some unexpected remark, such as: "If you put up a wall, think of what's left outside!" (a phrase which I often heard him repeat), or another one of his, and the Masons, recognizing his superior insight, made him a member of their Lodge, with special duties, and he brought in a great number of new rites and symbols.

  The fact is that for the whole period my brother had anything to do with it, the open-air Masonry (as I will call it to distinguish it from that which was later to meet in a closed building) had a much richer ritual, in which a part was played by owls, telescopes, pine cones, hydraulic pumps, mushrooms, little Cartesian devils, cobwebs, Pythagorean tables. There was also a certain show of skulls, not only of humans, but also of cows, wolves and eagles. Such objects and others, such as the trowels, rulers and compasses of the normal Masonic liturgy, were found at that time hanging on to branches in strange juxtapositions, and also attributed to the Baron's madness. Only a few persons hinted that this rebus now had a more serious meaning; but anyway, no one was ever able to trace a clear distinction between the earlier and later symbols, or exclude the possibility that from the first they had been esoteric symbols of some other secret society.

  For long before Cosimo joined the Masons, he had been in various associations and confraternities of trades and professions, such as St. Crispin's or the Shoemakers', the Virtuous Coopers', the Just Armorers' or the Conscientious Capmakers'. As he made on his own nearly everything he needed to live with, he knew a great variety of trades, and could boast himself a member of many guilds, which on their part were pleased to have with them a member of a noble family, of unusual talents and proved disinterest.

  How this passion which Cosimo always showed for communal life fitted in with his perpetual flight from society, I have never properly understood, and it remains not the least of his singularities of character. One would say that the more determined he was to hide away in his den of branches, the more he felt the need to create new links with the human race. But although every now and again he flung himself, body and soul, into organizing a new fellowship, suggesting detailed rules and aims, choosing the aptest men for every job, his comrades never knew how far they could count on him, where they could meet him, and when he would be suddenly urged back into the bird side of his nature and let himself be caught no more. Perhaps, if one tried, one could take these contradictory impulses back to a single impulse. One should remember that he was just as contrary to every kind of human organization flourishing at the time, and so he fled from them all and tried experiments with new ones. But none of these seemed right or different enough from the others. From this came his constant periods of utter wildness.

  What he had in mind was an idea of a universal society. And every time he busied himself getting people together, either for a definite purpose such as guarding against fire or defending from wolves, or in confraternities of trades such as the Perfect Wheelwrights or the Enlightened Skin Tanners, since he always got them to meet in the woods, at night, around a tree from which he would preach, there was always an air of conspiracy, of sect, of heresy, and in that atmosphere his speeches also passed easily from particular to general, and from the simple rules of some manual trade moved far too easily to a plan for installing a world republic of men—equal, free and just.

  So Cosimo did little more in Masonry than to repeat what he had done in the other secret or semi-secret societies of which he had been a member. And when a certain Lord Liverpuck, sent by the Grand Lodge of London to visit his brethren on the continent, came to Ombrosa while my brother was Master, he was so scandalized by Cosimo's unorthodoxy that he wrote to tell London that this Ombrosa Masonry must be some new Masonry of the Scottish rite financed by the Stuarts to use propaganda against the Hanoverian throne, for a Jacobite restoration.

  After this came the incident I have described, of the two Spanish travelers who introduced themselves to Bartolomeo Cavagna as Masons. Invited to a meeting of the Lodge, they found it all quite normal, in fact they said it was just like the Orient of Madrid. It was this which roused the suspicion of Cosimo, who knew only too well how much of the ritual was his own invention; that is why he tracked down the spies, unmasked them and triumphed over his old enemy, Don Sulpicio.

  Anyway, my opinion is that these changes in liturgy were a personal need of his own, for he could just as easily have taken the symbols of every trade, except that of mason, he who had never wanted nor built nor inhabited any houses with walls.

  } 26 {

  OMBROSA was also a land of vines. I have never mentioned this, as in following Cosimo I have always had to keep to vegetation with high trunks. But there were vast slopes of vines, and in August under the festooned leaves the rosy grapes swelled in clusters of thick juice that was already wine-colored. Some vines were on arbors. I mention this because as Cosimo became older he had got so small and light and learned so well how to move without throwing all his weight in one place that the crossbars of the pergolas held him. He could thus pass on to the vines, and by supporting himself on the poles called scarasse, could do work, such as pruning in winter, when the vines are like bare hieroglyphics, or in summer thin out the heavy foliage or look for insects, and then in September help with the vintage.

  For the vintage the entire population of Ombrosa would come out into the vineyards for the day, and everywhere the green of vines was dappled with the bright colors of skirts and tasseled caps. Muleteers loaded basket after full basket into the panniers and emptied them in the vats; other basketfuls were taken by the various tax collectors, who came with squads of bailiffs to levy dues for the local nobles, the Government of the Republic of Genoa, the clergy and other tithes. Every year there was some row or other.

  The question of what parts of crops to allot around was the major reason for the protests set down in the "books of complaints," at the time of the French Revolution. Books like these were also filled up at Ombrosa, just to try it, even if here they were no use at all. This had been one of Cosimo's ideas. At that time he no longer felt any need to attend the meetings of the Lodge and hold discussions with those old stick-in-the-muds of Masons. He was on the trees in the square and all the people from the beaches and countryside around came crowding beneath to get him to explain the news, for he received newspapers by post and also had certain friends who wrote to him, among them the astronomer Bailly, who was later made mayor of Paris, and other club members. Every day there was something new: Necker, and the Tennis Court, and the Bastille, and Lafayette on his white horse, and King Louis disguised as a lackey. Cosimo would explain and act everything out, jumping from branch to branch, and on one branch he would be Mirabeau at the tribune and on another Marat at the Jacobins, and on yet another King Louis at Versailles putting on the Phrygian cap to please the housewives who had come marching out from Paris.

  To explain what "books of complaints" were, Cosimo said: "Let's try and make one." He took a school notebook and hung it on the tree by a string; everyone came there and wrote down whatev
er they found wrong. All sorts of things came out; the fishermen wrote about the price of fish, and the vineyard men about those tithes, and the shepherds about the borders of pastures, and the woodmen about the Commune's woods, and then there were all those who had relatives in prison, and those who had got lashes for some misdeed, and those who had it in for the nobles because of something to do with women; it was endless. Cosimo thought that even if it was a "book of complaints" it need not be quite so glum, and he got the idea of asking everyone to write down what they would like most. And again everyone went to put down their ideas, sometimes rather well. One wrote of the local cakes, one of the local soup; one wanted a blonde, one a couple of brunettes; one would have liked to sleep the whole day through, one to go mushrooming all the year round; some wanted a carriage with four horses, some found a goat enough; some would have liked to see their dead mother again, some to meet the gods on Olympus. In fact, all the good in the world was written down in the exercise-book, or drawn—since as many did not know how to write—or even painted in colors. Cosimo wrote too—a name—Viola. The name he had been writing everywhere for years.

  It was a fine exercise-book—full, and Cosimo called it "Book of Complaints and Contents." But when it was all written from cover to cover there was no assembly to send it to, so there it remained hanging on the tree by a string, and when it rained it began to blotch and fade, and the sight made the hearts of the Ombrosians tighten at their present plight, and filled them with desire to rebel.